A songbook of progressive/protest music for the twenty-first century. Dozens of anthems from 1970 to the present, from around the world, all with an essential "hook" that makes them ideal for progressive mobilizations and celebrations.

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Nick Lowe wrote "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding," and released it on a 1974 album by his band Brinsley Schwarz. Elvis Costello and his lethal band The Attractions recorded it as the B-side of a now-forgotten Lowe single (which Lowe produced but did not play on). Its popularity led to its drafting in the US as the final track on Costello's incendiary 1979 album, Armed Forces, where it replaced "Sunday's Best," which was apparently deemed insufficiently epic. The Armed Forces shuffle over time established the song as a bona fide New Wave anthem.

Power-pop of this kind, including Lowe's and Costello's variants, often had a posy feel to it, and "(What's So Funny ...)" comes across as a kind of postmodern protest song, a posture captured perfectly in its title -- defensive, self-absorbed, yet also gloriously defiant. "I believe that Nick wrote the song as an affectionate parody of various pious '60s peace anthems," Costello recalled in the liner notes to the Rykodisc reissue of Armed Forces.

The lyrics also have a premodern quality, though -- "this wicked world," "is all hope gone," "the strong and ... the trusting," "downhearted ... spirit" -- and their structure is as simple and sturdy as an Elizabethan folk ballad:

As I walk this wicked world

Searching for light in the darkness of insanity

I ask myself is all hope gone

Is there only pain and hatred and misery

And each time I feel like this inside

There's one thing I want to know

What's so funny 'bout peace, love and understanding

What's so funny 'bout peace, love and understandingAnd as I walk on through troubled times

My spirit gets so downhearted sometimes

Where are the strong and who are the trusting

And where is the harmony, sweet harmony

And each time I feel like this inside

There's one thing I want to know

What's so funny 'bout peace, love and understanding

What's so funny 'bout peace, love and understanding

The song's pummeling assault, with The Attractions' drummer Pete Thomas driving home the groove, banishes any descent into smug self-referentiality. Says Costello: "We certainly attacked the song with little sense of irony and as if it were obvious that no one knew the answer to the question that the song posed." It seems an ideal anthem for this complex age of pro-peace activism, posing a core pacifist question and challenge in a way that miraculously avoids mawkishness.

Here's the original 1974 version of "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding" as rocked by Lowe's Brinsley Schwarz outfit:

Check out also the substantially more raucous 1974 live version for the BBC here. I can't find Elvis Costello and the Attractions' original recording of "(What's So Funny ...)" anywhere on YouTube. But there's plenty of interesting performances of the song online. Here's a 2004 rendering with his band The Imposters:

Wikipedia reports: "In 2004, '(What’s So Funny 'bout) Peace, Love and Understanding' was regularly performed as an all-star jam on the 'Vote for Change' tour, which featured a rotating cast of headliners. The October 11 concert at the MCI Centre in Washington DC was broadcast live on the Sundance Channel and on radio. This version of the song featured Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, the Dixie Chicks, Eddie Vedder, Dave Matthews, and John Fogerty with Michael Stipe, Bonnie Raitt, Keb' Mo', and Jackson Brown[e]."

See also Nick Lowe performing a solo acoustic version of the song on George Stroumboulopoulos's show Whole Lotta Livein 2011.

Song available on Elvis Costello and the Attractions, Armed Forces(1979), track 13 (Rykodisc remaster).

The best-known cover version of the song after Costello's is a jazz interpretation by Curtis Stigers, which appeared on the soundtrack for The Bodyguard, Whitney Houston's best-known film vehicle. This was also by far the best-selling version of the song; Lowe had the kind of windfall enjoyed by Dolly Parton when Whitney recorded her "I Will Always Love You" for the same soundtrack album, which has sold well over ten million copies.

The Australian group Midnight Oil, who place twosongs on this list, also frequently included "(What's So Funny ...)" as a delirious encore in their eighties and early nineties concert performances (their version was only ever released as a live B-side for the "Put Down That Weapon" single). These renditions are imprinted on my memory, and on various bootleg CDs in my collection, but they don't seem to have left any spoor on YouTube.

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Adam Jones, Ph.D.

We need new anthems. "We Shall Overcome" and "If I Had a Hammer" and "Give Peace a Chance" all had their moment, but they now sound dated and even clichéd. This blog proposes a new songbook (see list below) -- with selections from 1970 to the present -- for the activists of the twenty-first century. To qualify as anthems, these tracks must (a) be broadly positive/ progressive in content; (b) have an essential and substantial "hook" (a line, a verse, a chorus) that could realistically be sung by many progressive people at once, whether for protest or celebration; (c) reflect the ever more globalized world of activism, which means I'm always on the lookout for diverse materials from the Global South; and (d) be appealing to me personally, or why would I be doing this? I'll be blogging over fifty of my own proposals, and I welcome suggestions for further entries. You can share your comments at the end of each entry, and email me with your feedback. Please also let me know if you find any broken links. Now -- let's raise our voices! Adam

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